[Nook Color General] swoozle:
1/16/2012 update: Thanks to waxhell for compiling all of the results in this thread (at least as of mid-december! OK, so I took a while to get this posted...)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjPE3ZAD2eVudE9vZmQ3aHlfTkFvU2J4ZUplRDJQTEE

5/20 update: SD card performance benchmark table by a.fenderson from later in this thread added at the bottom of this post. Thank you a.fenderson!

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April minor update with a Transcend SD (see http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=12964262&postcount=8)

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Let me tell you my story.

Over the last couple of months as I have mucked around with SD booting various flavors of froyo and, more recently, CM7, I have found it maddening that there are apparently so many people that LOVE those versions, even people that seemed to have the same SD card as the two I've tried.

One of those is a Class 10 Patriot 8gig, which I've seen mentioned as an acceptable boot disk.

The other is a Kingston Class 4 4gig that tests out as significantly slower than the Patriot, but didn't really run froyo any slower.

Now I know I've seen posts that mention small block write speed as being important, but the numbers I've seen posted really didn't make me think the Patriot was the cause...

...the cause of FRUSTRATINGLY slow UI, where froyo (and CM7) seem to go off into lala-land for a few seconds every time I (tried to) do something.

...the cause of glacial web-surfing, where even downloading GOOGLEforchrissake takes forever. Of snail's-pace market downloads. Oh god.

Every time I would give up and go back to Eclair and breath a sigh of relief, reveling in the snappiness, the zippy web-surfing, the rapid response of m.pornhub.com.

And every time the siren song of the CM7-elite would call me back. THIS time I did something different. I saw mention that a Class 2, YES A FREAKING CLASS 2, Sandisk from costco worked well. So I skippity-skopped up and bought one.

After backing up the Patriot and writing THAT VERY SAME img to the Sandisk (which, yes, took 3 times as long as writing to the Patriot), I booted CM7.

OMG

The heavens opened and the angels sang, I HAD ARRIVED IN THE PROMISED LAND!

NOW I knew what the chosen had been praising! NOW I knew the joy that is CM7! ZIP-ZIP-ZIPPITY!

HOLY CRAP?! How could a benchmark be so misleading? I HATE those bastard SD manufacturers, or maybe it's the industry group that chose such a sucky measure of speed.

For your edification, here are some CrystalDiskMark (5 iterations, 50MB) results from 2 sucky cards and the good Sandisk.

__Test_________________Sandisk 8G Class 2___Patriot 8G Class 10____Kingston Class4 4Gig

Sequential Read :__________10.871 MB/s________20.036 MB/s___________18.700 MB/s

Sequential Write :__________6.659 MB/s________13.660 MB/s____________4.277 MB/s

Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :___3.077 MB/s_________3.444 MB/s____________2.088 MB/s

Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :__1.791 MB/s________0.038 MB/s_____________0.016 MB/s

Look at that, both the Kingston and the Patriot blow away or are close enough to the Sandisk in everything BUT....

(wait for it)....

SMALL BLOCK RANDOM WRITES

where the Sandisk is FIFTY times the speed of the Patriot and ONE HUNDREDtimes the Kingston.

Now you may say, "Swizzlenuts, old pal, I KNEW that."

But for all you poor slobs who didn't, who are dragging yer sorry ass through the broken glass that is booting off of a slow SD (you know who both of you are), I hope this helps.

And now you may commence posting links to specific posts where this info was discussed in detail last December.

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Thanks to all of the people that posted their results and to a.fenderson for compiling them. Here's his table from http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=13991898&postcount=144

POSTER BRAND CLASS CAPACITY 4 KB RANDOM
(GB) WRITE QD32(MB/s) NOTE
swoozle SanDisk 2 8 1.791 Model: SDSQ-8192-AC11M
a.fenderson SanDisk 4 16 1.660 SanDisk C4 16GB 1 of 2 cards
MickMcGeough SanDisk 4 8 1.59 benchmarked in XBench, QD unknown
a.fenderson SanDisk 4 16 1.500 SanDisk C4 16GB 2 of 2 cards
Awats SanDisk 4 16 1.391 SanDisk C4 16GB 1 of 2 cards ; fastest (onboard) reader
arwild01 SanDisk 4 8 1.369
Awats SanDisk 4 16 1.284 SanDisk C4 16GB 2 of 2 cards ; fastest (onboard) reader
robot8 SanDisk 4 8 1.270 SanDisk C4 8GB 2 of 2 cards
robot8 SanDisk 4 8 1.259 SanDisk C4 8GB 1 of 2 cards
chinly43 SanDisk 4 16 1.257 (not via Nook) ; same card as chinly43's other listed SanDisk C4 16GB
joobu SanDisk 4 4 1.175
angomy Nook internal N/A N/A 1.116 via Nook on USB
chinly43 Nook internal N/A N/A 1.094 via Nook on USB
a.fenderson Transcend 2 32 1.032
a.fenderson SanDisk 4 4 0.898
a.fenderson SanDisk 2 4 0.891
pchoi94 SanDisk 4 16 0.834
chinly43 SanDisk 4 16 0.769 via Nook on USB ; same as chinly43's other listed SanDisk C4 16GB
pryonix SanDisk 4 8 0.625
chinly43 SanDisk 2 8 0.616
a.fenderson SanDisk 4 8 0.596
angomy SanDisk 4 16 0.574
Blue6IX SanDisk 2 16 0.350
a.fenderson SanDisk N/A 2 0.269
Awats SanDisk 4 2 0.261 SanDisk C4 2GB 1 of 2 cards ; fastest (onboard) reader
Awats SanDisk 4 2 0.236 SanDisk C4 2GB 2 of 2 cards ; fastest (onboard) reader
pryonix Samsung N/a 2 0.093
victle Kingston N/A 2 0.051
victle Dane-Elec N/A 2 0.050 0.050 or less: exact value unspecified
joobu Lexar 4 8 0.038
swoozle Patriot 10 8 0.038
Blue6IX Dane-Elec 4 4 0.037 (made in Japan)
omghahalol Transcend 6 16 0.037
Ravynmagi Samsung(??) 2 4 0.037
pryonix Kingmax 10 16 0.036
Ravynmagi Wintech 10 16 0.036
victle Transcend 6 4 0.034
omghahalol Transcend 6 8 0.033
Ravynmagi SanDisk 2 8 0.033
pryonix Transcend 6 8 0.033
Ravynmagi Patriot 10 16 0.030
Blue6IX PNY 10 8 0.030
pchoi94 Kingston 2 16 0.030
swoozle Transcend 6 8 0.029 Model: TS8GUSDHC6
joobu ?? N/A 2 0.029
chinly43 SanDisk N/A 1 0.029
a.fenderson SanDisk N/A 1 0.028
victle PNY 4 8 0.028
Blue6IX PNY N/A 2 0.027 (made in Taiwan)
omghahalol SanDisk 2 2 0.021
MickMcGeough SanDisk 2 8 0.02 benchmarked in XBench, QD unknown
robot8 Transcend 6 8 0.018 Transcend C6 8GB 1 of 2 cards
ExploreMN Patriot 10 16 0.018
arwild01 Samsung(??) 4 8 0.017
swoozle Kingston 4 4 0.016 Model: SDC4/8GB
Awats Patriot 4 4 0.016 Patriot C4 4GB 1 of 2 cards ; fastest (onboard) reader
robot8 Transcend 6 8 0.014 Transcend C6 8GB 2 of 2 cards
Tnexus Patriot 10 16 0.014
a.fenderson Kingston 4 8 0.014
Awats Patriot 4 4 0.011 Patriot C4 4GB 2 of 2 cards ; fastest (onboard) reader
chinly43 Lexar 4 8 0.011